A26892:1418
A Christian Directory
A Christian directory, or, A sum of practical theology and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortify every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.A Christian directory, or, A summ of practical theologie and cases of conscience directing Christians how to use their knowledge and faith, how to improve all helps and means, and to perform all duties, how to overcome temptations, and to escape or mortifie every sin : in four parts ... / by Richard Baxter.
London: printed by Robert White for Nevill Simmons, 1673
Title page typeset from the transcription.
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
§. 9. Direct. 8. Take heed of a Melancholy habit of body: For Melancholy people can scarce delight 1in any thing at all, and therefore not in God. Delight is as hard to them, as it is to a pained member to find pleasure, or a sick stomach to delight in the food which it loathes. They can think of God with trouble, and fear, and horror, and despair; but not with delight.
§. 9. Direct. 8. Take heed of a Melancholy habit of body: For Melancholy people can scarce delight 1in any thing at all, and therefore not in God. Delight is as hard to them, as it is to a pained member to find pleasure, or a sick stomack to delight in the food which it loaths. They can think of God with trouble, and fear, and horror, and despair; but not with delight.
- 1Direct. 8.
§. 10. Direct. 9. Take heed of an impatient peevish self-tormenting mind, that can bear no cross; and 1of overvaluing earthly things, which causeth impatience in the want of them. Make not too great a matter of fleshly pain or pleasure; Otherwise your minds will be called to a continual attendance on the flesh, and taken up with continual desires, or cares, or fears, or griefs, or pleasures; and will not be permitted to solace themselves with God. The soul that would have pure and high Delights, must abstract it self from the concernments of the flesh, and look on your body as if it were the body of another, whose pain or pleasure you can choose whether you will feel: when Paul was rapt up into the third Heaven, and saw the things unutterable, he was so far freed from the prison of sense, that he knew not whether he was in the Body, or out of it. As the separated souls that see the face of God and the Redeemer, do leave the Body to be buried and to rot in darkness, and feel not all this to the interrupting of their joys; so faith can imitate such a Death to the world, and such a neglect of the flesh, and some kind of elevating separation of the mind, to the things above. If in this near conjunction you cannot leave the Body to rejoice or suffer alone, yet, as it self is but a servant to the soul, so let not its pain or pleasure be predominant, and control the high operations of the soul. A manly valiant believing soul, though it cannot abate the pain at all, nor reconcile the flesh to its calamity, yet it can do more, notwithstanding the pain, to its own delight, than strangers will believe.